Red Velvet Cupcakes – A Baking Adventure

My kids love red velvet cupcakes. There’s something uniquely interesting about the colour, texture and taste of these things that make them deeply desirable. They also need to have a cream cheese frosting to provide the flavour contrast or it doesn’t work. The cupcakes are essentially a chocolate cupcake but coloured red.

For my daughter’s 12th birthday party I made them for her. I could have bought them from the cupcake stores, my local IGA or even Costco’s humongously decadent version but I opted to bake them from scratch. However, I saw this as an opportunity to experiment, i.e. play. There would be three components to play with; the cupcake, the frosting and the decoration.

CUPCAKES

I reviewed a few different red velvet cupcake recipes and finally settled for Paula Deen’s version. I made a few substitutions though based on my local produce and baked the first batch.

They were pretty good, around 8½ out of 10 but they didn’t rise very much. They also weren’t as dark or as sweet as I liked so I made some changes. This was the final recipe I used:

2½ Cups Flour, All-Purpose
1½ Cups Sugar, Dark Brown
1¼ Tsp Baking Soda
1 Tsp Salt
2 Tbsp Cocoa Powder

2 Eggs, Large
1½ Cups Canola Oil
1 Cup Buttermilk (3.25% Fat)
2 Tbsp Red Food Colouring
1 Tsp Cider Vinegar
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

I used the same directions although I found that the yield was only 20 cupcakes, not 24 as you need to fill each case to the ¾ mark. You also need to use silicone or foil cases, not paper cases as the oil tends to leach a little which just makes them look unappetizing.

I added more cocoa powder to increase the sweetness but also give more of a hint of chocolate. It also gave the cupcakes a dark red colour. I also used dark brown sugar for similar reasons and I particularly enjoy the extra depth and warmth you get.

I increased the baking soda to try and make them rise more and make them fluffier. I still want them fluffier but the experts (the kids) tell me a true red velvet cupcake isn’t fluffy. However, I’d be tempted to increase the baking soda to 2 Tsp and see what happens, maybe this would get my yield back up to the claimed 24. I also used the full fat buttermilk rather than the light version as I found that baking with light ingredients usually ended up with bad results. I also read that cider vinegar was sweeter than white vinegar — I tried both and I couldn’t tell the difference.

If I was looking for more refinements I’d be interested in using butter instead of oil, or using a mixture of the two as I didn’t really like the oily texture but otherwise I’m happy with the final result.

FROSTING

My frosting search was a little trickier as I wanted to use whipped cream. Cream cheese can be over-powering and we’ve previously struggled to find an acceptable whipped cream filling and topping for cakes. Using plain whipped cream was unacceptable as it weeps after a day and tends to look unappetising after two days. I collected a few recipes and ideas from the Internet and made a few different testers.

Adding icing sugar, gelatin and dry vanilla pudding mix to whipped cream all worked well as stabilizing agents. The gelatin didn’t change the flavour at all but we said we’d use the icing sugar version for cake fillings and the dry vanilla pudding mix version for the red velvet cupcakes. Adding just icing sugar to whipped cream worked well but it still looked a little soggy the day after. Therefore I propose two whipped cream recipes:

• Whipped Cream with Icing Sugar and Gelatin – Add ¼ Tsp of Gelatin and 2 Tbsp of Icing Sugar (Confectioner’s Sugar) to 1 Cup of whipped cream.
• Whipped Cream with Dry Vanilla Pudding Mix – Add 2 Tbsp of dry vanilla pudding mix to 1 Cup of whipped cream. I used a packet mix for Angel Food Cake as my ‘dry vanilla pudding mix’.

I found an ‘old fashioned’ whipping cream at IGA with 36% fat which made it easier to whip than the normal 33% version that is more freely available.

And whoever suggested stabilizing whipped cream with cream of tartar should be shot. Don’t try it, it’s vile.

And as for the cream cheese frosting. I tried a buttercream frosting as well as a ricotta version and a devon cream recipe that combined sour cream with cream cheese — all of them failed the taste test.

In the end I stuck to the recipe and it worked very well:

16oz Cream Cheese, Light [softened]
8oz Butter, Unsalted [softened]
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
4 Cups Confectioner’s (Icing) Sugar [sifted]

I just had to nuke the butter and cream cheese in the microwave for 20 seconds to soften them up. I used a light cream cheese though and unsalted butter. I don’t like salt and I hoped that the light cream cheese would also be lighter in taste. It worked perfectly and I’d happily score the frosting as 10 out of 10. I really can’t think of any way of improving the frosting but you need to use an electric mixer to make it white and fluffy.

DECORATION

I don’t like royal icing or fondant icing; it looks nice but they taste like hardened cardboard or soggy cardboard so I opted for marzipan. I used the Marzipan Candy recipe from All Recipes and it worked perfectly. However, I couldn’t model with the darn stuff so I was limited to flat shapes. It was an acceptable trade-off in my opinion.

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